¡Wauoooo, Reynaldo!

OK, a smidge of backstory.

Back when I covered Ozzie Guillén, his Twitter account was a must-read (recall him tweeting ump disses from the clubhouse after being ejected from a game in New York?), que obviamente.

Once, I can’t recall the circumstances, it could’ve been complimenting Ibis or back-patting Harold or cheering a favorite Venezuelan soap opera or even some sort of b.s. bullfighting plaudit, Guillén got super excited about something, and the tweet just came out like waaaauuuuuoooooo! Well, likely dog-tired from too many late flights, bad meals and 2 a.m. video Macgyvering, I found this tweet downright hilarious.

So much so that for my Chicago White Sox “Six Pack of Stats” at CSN, I turned the framing of the “top play of the game” into this:

Wauoooo of the Day (greatest win probability added, single play)
With a .110 WPA, it was the last two White Sox runs that added most to the win, when Morel singled up the middle to drive in Ramírez and Rios. White Sox 4, Twins 0

(And hey, if you’d like to see an authentic, eighth anniversary CSN gamer in the wild, click over to South Side Hit Pen sometime and take a gander at full coverage of an extraordinary doubleheader in Minnesota, eight years ago today.)

Anyway, that explains the headline.

So, White Sox starter Reynaldo López was, in a word, WAUOOOO today.

His first career complete game and one-hitter came in an extraordinary, 7-1 win over Cleveland on Thursday afternoon, securing a series split and keeping the Wahoos currently on the outside looking in at the postseason.

Nine innings, one hit, one earned, three walks and 11 Ks, and as much as can be written, let’s just have some look-sees:

The only point scored off of López in the game came in the second, when the righty was stung with a two-out, five-pitch walk to Jake Bauers, followed by a run-scoring double from Kevin Plawecki.

At the time, that cut the White Sox lead in half, but the South Siders had a lot more offense in them today.

Welington Castillo was the offensive star of the game, going 3-for-5 with a homer, two doubles and three RBIs. Danny Mendick took advantage of his first career start to go 2-for-4 (his first career hit a bunt, natch). Yoán Moncada, prior to Gatorade duty, went 2-for-5 with a double.

And Tim Anderson chipped in a 2-for-5 day with a double, pushing his now-league leading average to .332.

What an absolutely wonderful, delightful, wauoooo ballgame. Efforts like this, with big contributions from the yutes like López, Moncada, Anderson and even Mendick, makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, this rebuild’s gonna work.

A bit of a gap in coverage between this early afternoon getaway game and tomorrow night’s tipoff at home vs. the Angels at 7:10. Ricky Renteria was so excited about Mendick getting his first career hit as a bunt he threw out his shoulder while fist pumping (joking ... ?) and will undergo rotator cuff surgery, missing the weekend series; Joe McEwing manages in his stead.